Formal stormwater management programs often are developed in response to regulatory mandates, such as the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) stormwater requirements, or in reaction to major flood events that, for a time, raise public awareness for proper urban drainage and watershed management. Once the initial regulatory requirements or public outcry from flooding is appeased, however, stormwater programs can fall into the trap of complacency. As time passes from the regulatory milestone or flood event, the staff and public might lose sight of the importance of furthering a comprehensive and proactive stormwater management program for the community.
How can stormwater managers avoid having their programs backslide into bureaucracy and instead help them soar to new heights of effectiveness? A key is in crafting and implementing a world-class vision for the stormwater program. Building a clear and inspiring vision will enable the stormwater organization to effectively and efficiently move forward even after the smoke settles following the regulatory permit approval or when those past raging rivers and streams now appear as gentle and inconsequential brooks. Indeed it is natural for complacency to settle upon people and any organization, not just a stormwater program, without a unifying direction provided by a thoughtfully articulated vision.
This article describes the visioning process and framework used by the City of Greensboro, NC, and its stormwater management utility and program, drawing from the work of management authors James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras. Building a robust organizational vision entails identifying unchanging core values and purpose while setting aggressive, dynamic, and tangible goals for the future. Goals help the stormwater program come alive and energize the staff and public about the program’s strategic importance and value. The vision for the stormwater program must fit the local governmental context, including needs and desires of customers and stakeholders. Alignment of people and resources in the stormwater program with the vision is vital for effective implementation. In developing and implementing the organizational vision, it will become evident that the right people are the most important ingredient for a successful stormwater program. But you must first know where you are going and why in order to properly align your limited resources for program implementation.
We must acknowledge that the regulatory NPDES minimum control measures are needed in most cases, but stormwater professionals likely would add that such “regulatory sticks” are not very inspiring or motivating. How many stormwater engineers or water-quality specialists awaken excited about going into the office or field to see if they can satisfy some type of minimum measure? We need to answer foundational questions: Why does the stormwater program exist? If the regulatory mandates were abolished, would the community even notice if the stormwater program did not exist? Dedicated stormwater professionals, at their core, want to make a positive difference and demonstrate meaningful value from the new program to the community or region served.
It is therefore important to identify the unchanging core purpose and reason for existence of the stormwater program beyond simply satisfying ever-changing regulatory targets. Developing a sound vision for the stormwater organization will empower and motivate team members, who in turn will focus their energies on improving quality of life in their community through new stormwater programs. In sharing this passion for understanding, articulating, and applying an organizational vision, many listeners say they generically grasp such ideas as program purpose and goals but do not have a framework and process for developing them. We will walk through a proven process in this article.
The well-conceived vision goes beyond the initial “sell” of the stormwater program and helps the organization foster the strategic development of stormwater management as a value-added service for the community. Such a vision can help stormwater chart a course to one day possibly rival much better understood and accepted utilities, such as water and electricity. Is this stormwater dream far-fetched? There probably were also more than a handful of skeptics when President Kennedy set a goal of placing a man on the moon.
While not rocket science, this article flows from first understanding the mission of the organization in which the stormwater program is created. In this case, the City of Greensboro is the local government entity that has chosen to create a formal stormwater management utility and program. The next step is to place the stormwater program under the umbrella of the specific department or function in which it is organized. In Greensboro, for example, the stormwater management program is a division of the Water Resources Department, which provides clean drinking water, wastewater collection and treatment, and comprehensive stormwater management for the community.
Organizational Perspective
Researchers Jim Collins and Jerry Porras define an organizational vision in terms of its unchanging core values and purpose along with dynamic and aggressive goals that help stimulate progress. Before thinking about the stormwater vision, a first step is to examine the core values and purpose of the larger organization. Knowing and understanding the vision of the organizational entity will help define an appropriate scope for the stormwater program and its respective vision. In other words, the stormwater program cannot go beyond the scope, authority, and vision of the organization of which it is a member. Be cautious: Those stormwater managers who believe their new federally mandated program can exist outside or beyond the broader municipality in which it resides are setting themselves up for much less than optimal results, if not for outright failure.
To effectively understand the core values and purpose of the City of Greensboro, here is a brief background to provide context. The City of Greensboro is a local government entity within the State of North Carolina. The city is a nonprofit local governmental agency. As such, the city’s efforts are aimed at and successes are measured across a broad range of indicators, including stewardship of public funds, citizen satisfaction, economic growth and development, and other generalized quality-of-life factors at the local level.
Greensboro is the largest city in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina with a population of 230,000 in 2003 and a jurisdictional land area of 117 mi.2 The city sits near the headwaters of the Cape Fear River Basin, the largest river basin in the state.
Incorporated in 1808 and named for Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene, the city is charged with providing such vital public services as community planning and transportation, police and fire protection, parks and recreation, libraries, solid waste collection, water treatment and distribution, and surface-water management. Greensboro has separate sanitary sewer and stormwater systems.
A look back at the historical archives indicates that the first water-quality–related ordinances in Greensboro were established circa 1889, when it became illegal to dump dirty water into any gutter or street, throw trash into any public well or cistern, damage public pumps, and wash anything within 20 ft. of a public well. In addition, privies were required to be cleaned every week and business owners were asked to clean their sidewalks and gutters each Wednesday and Saturday morning. Violators faced a $5 fine for noncompliance.
Formal stormwater management, however, is a relatively new specialty within the city focused on surface-water-quality protection and improvement, urban flood hazard mitigation and minimization, public education and awareness programs, and watershed management programs in general. Both the water resources and stormwater management programs are multimillion-dollar public utilities financed by user-fee–based enterprise funds that are akin to some aspects of pure business operations.
Greensboro’s stormwater utility generates a revenue of approximately $7.4 million annually (per fiscal year 2003–2004) which is used to fund key components of municipal separate stormwater system operation and maintenance, master planning and engineering, public education, water-quality monitoring, customer services, and capital improvements. The stormwater utility originated in 1994, primarily in response to Phase I of the NPDES regulations.
With this broad organizational and historical perspective in mind, let’s take a brief look at visioning efforts within the larger City of Greensboro organization.
Step 1: Examine the Soul of the Larger Organization
An organization’s vision consists of its core ideology and envisioned future, as advanced by Collins and Porras in their variation of the Chinese yin-yang symbol (figure courtesy of www.jimcollins.com). The yang portion holds the unchanging core ideology comprising core values and core purpose. The yin portion represents the envisioned future, or those overall goals that the organization will pursue. Collins and Porras also have coined the now-famous acronym in management circles, BHAG, to express that the best organizations in the world not only set overall goals but identify “big, hairy, audacious goals.” These BHAGs should be accomplished within a time frame of 10–30 years, and vivid descriptions accompany them, giving attributes of what it will look and feel like for the organization to meet its overall goal(s). The aggressive (and tangible) goals help stimulate progress toward the mission or core purpose.
The City of Greensboro discovered its core ideology–perhaps its soul–by articulating its core values and purpose. The unchanging core values of the municipal organization as identified by the city’s senior leadership team are honesty, integrity, stewardship, and respect. In defining honesty, the city has included being truthful, ethical, authentic, and principled. Integrity represents holding firm to strong values and acting in a manner consistent with stated goals. Stewardship is clearly essential to public service as staff is entrusted to use pooled local resources, such as tax dollars and user fees, for community needs and desires. Finally, respect simply entails treating people as you genuinely would like to be treated.
The municipal core values “are what they are” and need no further expansion or clarification other than they are entirely consistent with a local governmental organization that is dedicated to serving people and helping protect and improve quality of life. Citizens should expect no less from their municipal officials.
The core values provide a foundation to help guide organizational behavior. It should go without saying, but living the values is the key. To prove this point, guess which organization claimed the following values: respect, integrity, communication, and excellence. The answer is Enron Corporation (Stewart, 2002).
In Greensboro, the ageless values have driven the following general statement of core purpose dedicated to local public service:
We exist to partner with the community to build the desired quality of life for Greensboro. All of our actions are guided by our commitment to and measured by our success in building public trust and the future we and the community desire. Critical to our success is maintaining a work environment which fosters employee commitment to public service and making a difference in the lives of our citizens.
The purpose, in part, extrapolates the core values into a series of statements that blend the definitions and applications of the values into a unifying message of why the larger organization exists. To sustain and build quality of life for the community by making a difference in the lives of our citizens concisely captures the heart and soul of the Greensboro organization, to further simplify the city’s mission. The stormwater manager must clearly understand his or her organization’s reason for existence before attempting to lead articulation of a vision for the stormwater function.
Various departments and programs within the municipal organization have built upon the foundational ideology to craft mission statements unique to their area of service delivery. The stormwater manager should understand that we are working from the top down in the organization. In this example, we are examining the broad core values and purpose of the City of Greensboro, then the same for the Greensboro Water Resources Department, and finally the specific process and vision for the stormwater management program.
Why must we take such a stepwise approach? Successful stormwater management rarely is accomplished with a cowboy mentality. Existing or future stormwater managers who believe they can create a well-received stormwater program working outside of the organizational and community power structure are headed for disappointment. Stormwater management (especially in the case of utilities) often represents the need for a paradigm shift within both the organization and the community toward such issues as pollution prevention, willingness to pay a user fee for stormwater services, moving from reactive to proactive stormwater programs, and public outreach and involvement. At the same time, the keen stormwater manager must recognize and respect long-standing power systems at work within the organization and community. In this sense, change management is a large part of leading implementation for the successful stormwater program. To this end, a clear vision will be a tool to help lead the paradigm change and further the stormwater program value to the community. Legal mandates, such as NPDES, must be satisfied, but the ultimate test for the local stormwater program will be its genuine acceptance by the organization and community as a service worthy of its cost.
Step 2: Review the Mission of the Department Where Stormwater Resides
Next, a review of the mission (“mission” may be used interchangeably with “core purpose”) of the Greensboro Water Resources Department is provided. It cannot be stressed enough that understanding of organizational context is critical for the stormwater manager as he or she thinks about facilitating the stormwater vision. The manager must appreciate that the stormwater function is an important new part of but still remains subordinate to any larger organizational directives. (Note: If the stormwater program in your community is or will be organized as a completely new department or function of its own, reporting directly to executive management in the larger entity, skip Step 2 and go directly to Step 3.)
The mission of the Water Resources Department reads as follows:
As a vital service provider established by Greensboro City Government, we, the Department of Water Resources, seek to partner with local, state, and federal government and other stakeholders to provide the high quality of life and protection of health, environment, and economy that our citizens desire and deserve.
The core purpose of the Department of Water Resources is the stewardship of natural resources, system infrastructure, and public funds. We seek to maximize public trust in the provision of Water, Water Reclamation, (and Stormwater Management) services that enhance public health and safety, minimize environmental impacts and protect water quality, and allow for economic sustainability and growth that our community desires. We shall do this by honestly communicating with our employees, customers, and community and those who represent them as elected representatives or regulating authorities. We recognize the imperative that we as professionals are proactive and think long-term in our actions and solutions.
As we seek to provide Water, Water Reclamation, (and Stormwater Management) services now and into the future, we will always keep our commitment to providing excellent customer service. If we are to fulfill this purpose effectively, we will do it by recognizing and encouraging the important contribution of every member of our team, based on our core value of respect for the individual and our collective desire to support this core purpose.
The mission statement bounds water resources–related service delivery within the general guidance provided by the city’s declaration of core purpose. An earlier mission statement for the public water and wastewater utility may be found by simply removing the stormwater function indicated by the words in parentheses. Greensboro’s stormwater utility was placed within the Water Resources Department in 2000 to help facilitate a coordinated water/wastewater/stormwater program for the community. The public water utility, however, has been in existence for more than a century.
Just what is this departmental-level statement, and how would it be classified with respect to vision articulation? Although it contains elements of both, the Water Resources Department mission statement is closer to a core ideology for the water resources program than an envisioned future. An envisioned future in the Collins and Porras line of thinking holds the specific, tangible, and aggressive goals.
As a comparison, the police department has formulated an exceptionally clear and concise if not aggressive goal for its envisioned future: Make Greensboro the safest city in America. Most elements of the Water Resources Department statement should not change over time, consistent with the concept of a core organizational ideology. Although not found in the larger city or Water Resources Department mission statements, an emphasis in the stormwater visioning process will be to identify aggressive overall goals to stimulate progress and forward movement toward a core purpose.
Step 3: Crafting the Stormwater Vision
A summary description of the process used to craft the tailored vision for the stormwater management program is given in the balance of the article. Attention was given to the broader municipal organizational issues because they are mandatory for the proper creation of the stormwater vision.
Who Should Articulate the Stormwater Vision?
This is perhaps the first question that comes to mind. Any stormwater professional worth his or her weight in sediment knows that stakeholder involvement is critical to launching and implementing a successful stormwater management program. Notwithstanding the importance of stakeholders, the stormwater visioning framework described herein must be led by the stormwater manager and his or her stormwater leadership team, the key staff members. The key members are those who uniquely and integrally understand the goals and desires of the stakeholders and the workings and reality of resource and political allocation within the municipal organization, who want to make a significant positive impact on the community through their work, and who must, in fact, live the stormwater program every day. This experienced group is charged with articulating the vivid and moving stormwater vision, which will inspire and guide the real work of the municipal stormwater program.
This is really no different from the private-sector case where the chief executive officer (CEO) and executive management team would prepare a vision or strategic plan to best meet the stated goals of the board of directors and shareholders to whom they report. In the public stormwater case, the stormwater staff leadership team collectively must brainstorm, constructively inquire into and advocate prime issues, draft the vision consistent with the authority and scope granted the stormwater program by the municipal (or other) organization, and ensure that the vision promotes the varied interests of stakeholders. Trying to develop the stormwater vision described here likely would bog down a much larger group comprising internal and external stakeholders.
A good check on the stormwater vision is to present the product to stakeholders and request feedback to make sure that the staff leadership team has correctly interpreted its wide-ranging interests. In any event, it is the staff professionals who, in most cases, must make administrative decisions or prepare policy recommendations for elected officials in light of vastly different external opinions or desires.
For clarity, the vision under consideration is for the stormwater organization itself, not a more generic “vision of stormwater management for the community” that might have been used to market the need for creating the stormwater program. So the stormwater manager should pick his or her key leadership team and embark upon creating the long-lasting organizational vision. In Greensboro, a total of six staff professionals participated in the stormwater visioning process, with the effort facilitated by the program manager. Done right, the stormwater vision can provide focused guidance to the organization for years to come.
Visioning Process
With the stormwater leadership team assembled, an early step is to openly discuss why a carefully conceived vision is needed for the program. Despite the fact that upon reflection the need for vision is self-evident, initial staff response could include the following feedback:
- What is this all about? Why are we doing this?
- I have many “real projects” to work on, and this feels like a distraction.
- Will this “vision” have any practical impact on what we do in our jobs?
The stormwater manager should expect these and a wide range of other questions and potential concerns from his or her leadership team in the first minutes and hours of the visioning process. Do not be concerned as the facilitator. The fact that the manager is bringing in the team to develop the vision says a great deal. Specifically it relays to the staff that the manager does not have all of the answers and that program success depends on unselfish teamwork and spirited collaboration.
The thoughtful vision will not be completed in a few hours. The manager can schedule a focused retreat for the leadership team or schedule a series of extended meetings over the course of a few weeks or months until the brainstorming work is complete. The focused retreat likely will fast-track the completion of the vision statement, while the extended meeting option could allow even more time for each to reflect upon the process and bring more creative ideas to the visioning team.
The Greensboro team chose to complete the vision articulation over a series of eight meetings, each lasting from two to four hours. It was invigorating to observe that during this period, extending over six months, team members actually were able to tighten their project and program collaboration consistent with the “mutually understood direction” of the vision. This proves that while a vision statement is valuable and much needed, the process of developing the vision with your team does much to expose and drive home the collective goals and desires of the team members who are functioning effectively as interpreters and implementers for internal and external stakeholders. In reality, simply participating in the vision articulation helps each member refine or reallocate his or her daily work activities to better support and advance the shared purpose and goals of the stormwater program and the larger organization(s) of which it is a member.
What About the Champion Leader?
We all have heard about the superstar CEO or charismatic leader who embodies and champions his or her cause. A “champion leader” in this regard could play a large role in helping launch a new stormwater program, especially in the case of the utility creation. More importantly, however, a team of leaders–even an entire stormwater organization–must become motivated and charged to carry the program past the initial marketing glitz and glamour to make its “nuts and bolts” happen. The champion leader who does not develop and support a leadership team within the organization is setting up the stormwater program for potential mediocrity upon his or her departure and in fact is not a champion leader. Developing the stormwater vision with staff members will help them grow professionally and as a team, thereby contributing to the success of the organization rather than to its detriment.
The Stormwater Vision
Lessons about the value of teamwork and open collaboration were evident in the stormwater visioning process. The champion-leader myth was dispelled as perhaps more important for the initial stormwater utility creation than for its actual implementation. The true champion leader and manager is the one who understands that the mission of the organization is larger than himself or herself and that a team must approach the work of the stormwater program on a daily, cohesive, and focused basis. To that end, the stormwater visioning process resulted in a statement of the program’s unchanging core values and purpose along with several major overall program goals for the next 20 years.
Stormwater’s Reason for Being
Akin to the process described for the larger municipality, stormwater’s core ideology is f4ound by discovering the core values and purpose of the stormwater organization. The stormwater leadership team spent at least half of its time pondering, debating, inquiring and advocating, and deciding on the guiding core ideology for the stormwater organization.
An understanding of the municipal governmental system of which it is a part fostered the adoption of the city’s four core values as a sound base on which to stand. To these four, the stormwater team added the core value of environmental consciousness to emphasize the new focus on protecting and improving surface-water quality and the role of the stormwater program in helping change mindsets and behaviors toward the local environment.
With the core values unearthed, the mission of the stormwater program then was considered. The manager asked the leadership team to brainstorm potential attributes of the stormwater core purpose. Collins and Porras point out that the core purpose is like a distant star on the horizon that the organization constantly is trying to reach and that should rarely, if ever, change. The following are a handful of top attributes for components of the stormwater core purpose:
- Protect and improve surface-water quality
- Decrease problematic flooding (flood hazards)
- Decrease erosion and drainage problems
- Manage, maintain, and improve the storm drainage system infrastructure assets
- Improve the stability, health, and integrity of streams and surface waters
- Make local streams truly swimmable and fishable
- Provide outreach, education, and awareness for the public
- Provide watershed-based planning for stormwater-quality and -quantity management
- Advocate fiscal responsibility and efficiency vis-Ã-vis the stormwater utility
